Echo
by coffee shop poet
Summary: time is an unforgiving creature. aang-centric.


/i./

He can't feel much. It's relatively painless when it happens, but he can smell it. Feel it. The heat is a great hand and it's fiery grip catches him, smothers him, and he's starting to feel that growing agony, a slow scream that's not yet reached its full potential. Hunger and fatigue leave him defenseless in a fray. There isn't anything else to do but run.

Feet pound against the musky earth. Echoing footfalls follow behind him. He can't see, the night too thick with a paper-thin moon that sheds no silver incandescence beneath the canopy of the trees. A village is nearby…he could see a lantern hanging in the distance, a beam of hope. If only he can reach it…he would be safe. _Safe. _

The Fire Nation soldier releases a primal scream and a flash of orange-yellow light tears through the ruffled air. He cries out, his burnt hand reaching for the beacon, the unwavering hope, but gropes only darkness. He's scared…_what can I do? I can't fight back. _

_I can only die. Dying is all there's left._

The earth gathers a deep breath beneath him, the calm before the storm. He feels it begin to unravel and move and, in a moment, shards of ice and broadswords of water are thrown at his attacker. Blurred shapes move before him in the hollow night, but he's too tired…he can't move.

He gives in, surrenders to weariness. Everything grows heavier and his scorched body melts, the earth strikes at the tattered, loose ribbons of his failing insides, and he sinks into the arms of the air around him.

_Thy will be done._

/ii./

His surroundings are beginning to emerge from the dream-wrought netherworld of sleep. A pot of calming incense is burning somewhere next to him and he is in a room, bathed in a rich candle-gold glow. Everything is swathed in yellow light. As if he were witnessing his gradual unfurling from unconsciousness through a veil fashioned from the fabric of the sun.

The door creaks, a fond greeting. His ears prick forward and he's flying from the bed as quick as lightning, bolting for the cherry wood wardrobe which was cornered like a wallflower into the other side of the room.

Delicate footsteps barely upset the dozing floorboards. A voice infiltrates the mute serenity.

"Airbender, where have you gone?"

She is friendly, whomever she is. He can sense that from the silk intonation of her voice, the filtered sweetness as fragile as sakura blossoms in the spring. Through the sliver of vision he has behind the protective walls of the wardrobe, he can see her standing before the fire, rendered a mere faceless silhouette in the gloom. His isn't certain yet…he stays where he is. Unmoving. No voice.

"Please…don't be afraid. I'm here to help you."

He has already assumed as much as he glances inquiringly at the gauze wrapped around his body, his arms, his legs. But she could just as easily turn him in for the bounty, the reward for the last of his kind – Fire Lord Sozin would compensate her auspicious discovery with enough gold pieces for her live on for the rest of her life. He can't take the risk just yet…the fear of falling is still much too great.

She moves out of the murky doldrums which surround the bright hearth and he sees her. His breath catches in his throat. She is gaunt and beautiful, her soft, deep-set eyes like dewdrops against the backdrop of her dark skin.

_Water Tribe._

_She won't hurt me…we're fighting the same enemy._

He abandons his shelter, aching beneath his makeshift skin of gauze. Down to the roots of his bones, he is tired. The currents of his blood only seem to carry the weariness like poison throughout his body and all he wants to do is lie down, despite the new revelation of his savior. He does not want to be rude, so he steps forward, the pads of his feather-light feet silent against the creaky floorboards. The door of the wardrobe swings back, giving him away, and those deep blue eyes turn on him so swiftly that it makes him want to crawl back into his safe haven. Ever since the death of his people, ever since watching the soul bleed out of Gyatso's broken, devastated body, he has been flighty, fearful of every shift of the wind, every move he makes.

But her expression is drowning in compassion, white-foam crests in the shallows of her eyes depicting unmistakable flecks of warmth and gentleness. She will not hurt him…it is the last fractured offer of trust he could give. All of the other pieces are shattered and scarred.

She doesn't say anything at first. No playful cry of _there you are! _or _what were you doing in there? _is spoken as he comes forth from the anonymity of the shadows. She doesn't mar their first impressions by treating him like a child, which he is so easily mistaken for with his soft features and large eyes. But if they looked closer, they could see the shiny new calluses of forced survival and the evidence of his descent into grief.

He is no child. He just wears the misleading guise of one, draped in youthful skins but bearing the hardships and experience of a grown man.

"You have been through so much. I can _see _it...it's in your face." She finally speaks. She inclines her head, digging her way deeper into the graves of his people.

He tenses as he feels the cold probing of her ice-colored eyes in the graveyard of his old memories and then looks away once the moment becomes too uncomfortable to endure. She understands, it seems.

"Come with me into the sitting room. I have a cup of jasmine tea waiting for you if you promise to talk to me?"

She waits for recognition of her invitation. The smallest traces of acquiescence. Anything at all. He contemplates it, turns it over and over in his head, decides, and offers her a bow of gratitude.

"I would love a cup of tea. Thank you."

Months of little conversation and no society have left his voice to rot. It has atrophied and would have withered away completely if it were not for his recollection of manners and respect. He might have been mute by now if such a thing were possible and he nearly shuddered at the ice-cold thought of having no ability to talk at all.

Her kitchen is small, but conducive. Another fire burns in the grate, spreading feelers of heat throughout the quaint little room. A wash basin is the centerpiece of a plain block of wood in the far corner, near the peeling, pale green door, but it looks as if it hasn't been touched in a while. She offers the chair which boasts the closest proximity to the fire, but he is still recovering from his last encounter with the merciless element and takes the farthest chair instead.

She takes a cup, a chipped, rounded piece of ceramic, and tips the beaten kettle. The sound of flowing water perforates the room. He lightly bows his head and accepts the tea, curling his small hands around the warmed china, grateful for the warmth.

"What did the monks call you?" She looks at him. A plea. Interest.

He took his first sip, a slow, calculated test. A stab of pain plunges into his heart at the mention of his people. "My name is Aang."

The guarded look in his eyes tells her he does not want to talk of his losses. Of his dread. Of the threat he knows has been forced upon his life after the genoicide he has witnessed with his own young eyes. Of his responsibilities which he must face he is even less disposed to discuss.

"Aang…it is beautiful," she says.

The awkwardness of small talk hovers overhead like a troubled cloud.

"You were the one in the forest, when I was being attacked, weren't you?" He asks. "You're a waterbender."

It isn't a question.

"Yes, I am."

This confuses him a little, the dichotomy of appearances and actualities battling within him for dominance over his opinion of her. "If you don't mind my saying…why are you living here?"

"I have lived here a long time," she explains to him. "So long that I cannot even remember why it is that I came here in the first place."

He looks at her for a moment, and then sips pensively at his tea. "Why did you save me? It's forbidden to take in fugitives. You could be killed for helping me."

"My desire to aid you overpowered the fear of being caught," she replies. "Besides, I don't think you will have to worry much about reports of being sighted around here. The village is small and rebellious and your only willing witness will not be coming back anytime soon."

She doesn't even have to tell Aang that the Fire Nation soldier is dead.

/iii./

It is a temperate day when he studies her closely for the first time since he has met her. She has asked him to help her with a few untended chores around the house and he is wandering around the hearth, sweeping up ashes, moving so gracefully and fluidly that it could be mistaken for dancing the way his body moves across the room. The task is small and undemanding and he is healed enough in the last few days he's been here to be able to walk without that bone-crushing ache radiating through him anymore. At least, not as much. The pain is not as potent as it was before.

The broom idles in his resting hands. She's in the garden, harvesting her _bok choy _plants with patient hands as they have burrowed deep and nestled into the womb of the earth. Her face is still soft, unaltered by the greedy hands of time. Her youth is ignited by the harsh sun so proudly, so flagrantly, as if it has exhumed some grave secret and is making it known to the oblivious world for the first time. The girl picks up a grasshopper, her eyes alight with the fervor of a grand uncovering, and she watches it escape with a certain fondness that most would describe as respect.

She can't be any more than sixteen, he decides. Nothing more, nothing less. _Or else I am a fool._

It is when she comes inside, her wicker basket full of newly harvested vegetables, that it occurs to him in the cool, dimly lit room that he doesn't know his companion's name. She is a face without anything to call it by and it has been this way even after she had been so kind as to ask for his, to become familiar with him and elevate him in her eyes to more than a mere stranger. An acquaintance with the hope of something more…a friend.

She hums to herself, a foreign lullaby, as she brings a low-set, black cauldron to the table and sets it before her, basket full of vegetables emptied into its seemingly fathomless bottom. The dreary thud of heaviness resonates from within the walls of the cauldron and it's hauntingly resonant…of the sound of bodies hitting dull earth. Empty shells without a face.

The broom is set aside. No longer important, he thinks. The soot is fashioned into a heap of black ash before the dead hearth like a mountain, a cover of obsidian thrown over its sides. She is still humming, her large sea-stone eyes contently settled upon her work. He sits down. _Curiosity killed the lemur, _he remembers Gyatso always saying.

A raw nerve is struck, but he tries to tuck the sting of loss away.

"I never asked you your name." He says.

She looks up at him. Her curiosity is tangible, too. "My name?"

"Yes," he smiles, tilting his head, trying to nudge his way deeper into her open expression, looking for boarded windows and closed doors that he might not see on first glance. Might ignore upon seeing such an unshielded countenance. "Yes, your name. If I may ask for it, that is?"

"I don't mind." Her pages turn to a different chapter in the story, the one that tells of novelty and friendly afternoon conversations with a fascinating stranger. The words hidden in the corners of her mouth speak of sympathy and gentility; they tell her to smile in return. "My name is Hateya."

The silence, which was a whirling, thrashing pool of doubt on the shoreline of alien territory for him before, has become accustomed to its new tide. She is the island upon which he relies, the sturdy rock which the waters of his existence needs to satisfy his want for equilibrium, the presence of foundations for the surf to fall upon. It is adhering to a sort of patchwork comfort, something that reminds him of his old home.

Her humming resumes. He tries to place the melody, but resigns to his failure after a little while.

Another pique of curiosity catches him off guard. His eyes distinguish a subdued red stain on her neck, as if someone had spilt blood on her and it had dried to a dark, rich shade. He fumbles for the right words…how to ask? It may have been a wound from her skirmish with the soldier that had tried to kill him, but he's too interested now. He has to inquire.

He gestures to her neck. "Did you get that from the Fire Nation soldier?"

A vegetable escapes her distracted fingers. Its heavy body pounds heavily against the bottom as her hand snaps to the side of her neck. Her eyes brighten and her smile unfolds from its place of rest. "Oh, it's nothing serious. A scrape, is all."

The silence resumes. As does their work.

/iv./

Time is an unforgiving creature. It carries on, an unrelenting soldier marching onward toward the everlasting battle of eternity, and its footprints pound into the fragile form of life without even looking on the damage it inflicts upon the shadow of existence. Always rushing, never seeming to halt, never kind to those who wish for more of its company. Exhaustion tempts it into one life, for just a moment of stillness, then it continues on to the next.

Aang feels the imprint of its fleeting coming and going, the weight of it like a mountain. A terrible burden. Time, they say, heals all wounds, but it has forgotten him in the wake of its perpetual hurry. He still suffers the loss of his people. The gashes their death has left behind are still open and seeping. He begins to think they are infected with poisonous hate and he will never heal right, never let himself trust ever again.

But it is the slow, nimble fingers of security and restoration which works gently at the gaping holes. Sewing them together with the strings of a budding attachment to his refugee companion, the seams of friendship stitched into the new design of his life. He never wants to leave this place…it's peaceful here, living in the profile of the great peaks, beneath the coverlet of trees that populate the flatlands at the base of the mountain. He's beginning to fall in love it here and he knows it's dangerous…but he lets the blossoms of affection bloom anyway.

It feels like home.

The chores she gives him as the weeks fade to months are becoming increasingly harder tasks, but easier to accomplish as he grows stronger, more vibrant, _alive _again. He doesn't mind the effort it requires. It gives him time away from thinking too much.

The line between thought and feeling have formed an unnatural bond. He can't stop reeling backward into memories of the genocide and it tears him down to the base of his hatred again.

Hateya is another facet of beauty that he's grown to love about this place. She's a stark contrast to all the green, her blue heritage still too conspicuous to ignore by someone who knows the lines of sapphire blood are there, a stream of secrets just beneath the skin, but somehow she manages to find her place in the scene just fine. No one has ever suspected her and, so long as she keeps her identity to herself, they never will.

She doesn't talk much. He can't blame her, after learning to deal with solitude for so long. But he's always loved to tell stories and to talk and use his hands as if they are puppets in his little play. Her ears are infallibly receptors, never failing to listen to him even as the moon begins to sink and fade away like a ghost of the dying night into the weary haze of early morning.

But she never speaks of her life before she came here, never tells of stories of her tribe. She thrives on actions, serving tea in the afternoons and watching the birds roost on her young cherry trees, going into town after sundown to fetch ointments and herbs for his stubborn injuries and sweets she's remembered he likes. Often, she brings home something like the fruit pies his people used to make after her frequent trips to the town market nearby. He always bows to her, grateful, and never asks where she gets the money to pay for all these things.

Her face is as open as a long-told story, but behind the openness there is a locked door. And he doesn't know if there ever was a key.

She is a mystery. An object of his curiosity that aches like a slow-burning fire. He wants to know, but he doesn't know how to ask…

The wound on her neck never seems to heal.

/v./

Months surrender to the first year and time slips away like sand through a sieve. It is not long before he realizes he is very much attached to her; he came to this decision long ago. But his attachment has undergone metamorphisis, changing from a sapling acquaintance to a young friendship, to something beautiful - the blossoming cherry tree.

He dares not speak of his growing affections, but thrives on them as they continue to flourish in the light of his contentment. They are a beautiful distraction as the cruel agony of his people's genocide begins to fade to a dull throb.

It is autumn now, the season of the air nomads. He's beginning to forget some of his people's customs, out of habit or necessity he does not yet know. He hasn't practiced any bending since he arrived and doesn't much care either. The Avatar does not exist in his sheltered mind. Living the simple life of a non-bender has a solace all its own, one he cannot simply derive from the power of being one with the elements.

Aang is being selfish. And he embraces this truth as if it is the only one in the world worth knowing.

Hateya's garden is beginning to lose its color, paling steadily as the ground turns cold beneath them. The cherry tree, she says, will bloom next year and be a beautiful array of pink sakura blossoms. Aang is thankful for the fact that he will see them come and go…if only Hateya will let him stay.

He doesn't want to leave her. It's an almost unspoken agreement that they have become accustomed to each other's presence and have no intention of leaving the other behind.

But nothing can stay forever. Every flower must lose its bloom.

/vi./

_His body was tearing. That was all. It was something so simple that even his insides could see it well and they screamed for release with such urgency that the shockwaves of their anguish tore through him. Aang knew he would be torn in two. He knew and yet he couldn't do a thing about it._

_Blood gushed in viscous rivers down his belly as the skin that was being overstretched fractured like brittle stone and ripped with a sickening crack. A light shone through the opaque shield. A blue light. The agony seemed powerful enough to destroy him alone, but still he shredded into halves, separating. And one became two._

_He broke forth from his old shell and the blue light shone in his cruel, cold eyes._

_**You must not forget who you are.**_

The screaming is what wakes him, but he doesn't realize it's him until it's too late. Rushing footsteps knock against the creaking floorboards like an insistent visitor at the door. Hateya is by his side in an instant, muttering soft, calming prayers into his ear. His skin gleams with a thick sheen of sweat and his body trembles. The fear is overwhelming, but it was just a dream.

Hateya promises she will be back and, in a moment, she is. A wet, cold cloth is pressed against his feverish forehead and he collapses into her arms, tears breaching the rims of his eyes. She smells like the sea, of salt and spray and fragrant sand, and the smell is a wordless console.

"Aang, it was just a dream," she recites the assurance like a mantra. "It was just a dream. You're safe now. You're safe."

He presses his nose into her neck. _Just a dream, Aang. It wasn't real._

The wish to maintain his independence is forceful, but not powerful enough to conquer the desire to be held, to be soothed back to sleep by the sea-scent of Hateya's soft skin. He asks her to stay. Please. She can never refuse him and she strips the bed of the sweat-stained sheets and lies down beside him, gathering his limp, shivering body into her arms. His heartbeat hammers against her chest and hers seems to prance playfully around his, asking it to dance. Its pace slows, hesitant at first as the fear was still too near, but she placates him with those downy prayers and with her fingers tangling in his hair. Her mantra settles into something gentler, like a lullaby missing its melody…_I'm here, Aang. I'm here. Don't be afraid…I won't let anyone hurt you. _

Her eyes are what calm him the most. They drown him. Fill the lungs of his mind with water and he feels like he can't breathe. Despite their deceiving color, they're warm, full of empathy, void of the ice which threatens their mild spectrum. He still feels like he's dying as he soaks them in, but it's a pleasant sensation. She's like a gentle spirit, a beacon, a safe haven he can crawl into when he's scared.

_Oh, Aang. _She whispers. He closes his eyes as her lips touch his forehead, graze the tip of his nose...his entire body goes slack, bowing beneath a yielding sigh as he feels her lips brush against his. Waves of heat pulse through him. It only lasts for a moment, but the heat remains, as if she had stoked a fire deep in him with just one simple touch.

It doesn't die until he's asleep in her arms.

/vii./

He wants to tell her.

It's such an eager, assertive desire that he's certain he will burst if he tries to bury it a little deeper into obscurity. Nothing could sate its demands to be known to her. Nothing at all.

Aang hasn't recognized it for very long. This feeling is new to him, uncharted territory. It's one of those realizations that comes on progressively, develops slowly like the dawn. But the first light of love and understanding have broken over the hills of ignorance and he's seen it creep over the lonely knolls which breathe in the new day and exhale the morning dew. He's not alone anymore. In place of one solitary grain of sand in the desert of the world, there is two.

She is his other half, he has come to know. It isn't sudden, but it's certainly unexpected.

Ever since the dreams started, she's been his anchor. Tidal waves may fall over him, try to crush him in their watery fists, but she's always there to pull him to the surface. His breath of life. The dreams are a plague, but she knows the cure and she's always there when he's sick with them, staggering away from the purgatory of his own unrelenting mind.

It's daybreak again. She'll be back from town very soon, he reminds himself. The tea kettle sits on the table, short and squat and looking sleepy in the half-light that has trickled in from the open window. There are two tea cups and Aang stares blankly at the one across from him as if it will reveal to him a decoder for the mysterious ways of women. A way to read what's behind her walls.

The door opens. Aang leaps to his feet, little tufts of air issuing from his hands in his surprise that propel him a few inches off the ground. It's her and his mind begins to race in endless circles, muttering to itself and wishing it had never entertained such a dangerous idea. But his heart is oddly quiet. It says nothing to rebut logic, only stays firm on the foundations of emotion. It knows what it wants and it has to try.

"Hateya…" He breathes her name. It sounds suddenly odd, being closed in by such a small room, but she hears it. "You're here. You're home."

She looks at him oddly, but laughs anyway. "Of course I'm home, Aang," she replies. She sets a sack on the table, the skeleton of something round and hard beneath its tent-like concealment. "I brought your favorite. Egg custard."

"Thank you," he says, and fumbles with the ties of the sack. It's a nice distraction, but he's still nervous. "Can…can I tell you something? Something important?"

Out of courtesy and habit, she sits down at the table, facing him. "Of course. You can tell me anything."

But he never says a word. Just takes her small face into his small hands and traces the angles of her cheekbones, threads his thumbs through her dark hair. She closes her eyes and leans into his palms, plunging into their warmth, as if she had been waiting for the heat of his skin for a long time. Aang bites his lip for a moment, then leans slowly, so slowly into her. The scent of her body clouds his mind, drawing him into her as if she is the sea itself.

His breath hitches.

And they are fused together.

Her lips are warm and are like silk to the touch and as they move against his, possessing more skill in the few years she held over him, he feels himself soften and tremble at the same time. His fingers, threaded and knotted like twines in her hair, tug ever so gently on the ensnared strands and she breaks their embrace for a moment, gasping as the pain collides with the pleasure of his insistent tug. The heat he has felt before, when she had pressed her lips to his the night of his first dream, intensifies. He feels as if he is on fire.

He is taller than her despite his age and he overpowers her in the softest of ways. Kneading his hands in her hair, molding his lips to hers, nudging her gently. The kiss lasts only for a moment, the flicker of a slow heartbeat, but it's enough.

Aang doesn't pull away. He whispers, his breath hot against her mouth, his lips scraping hers. _I love you._

/viii./

"Let me take care of you."

It is like a plea. More like a plea than anything else he's ever said to her. Her dark hair is tangled around his hand as it buries itself in the long black strands. Most of it is splayed against the pillow which she is resting her head against, and he is immersed in her fragrant heat as he presses his nose into the hollow of her neck. Her clothes rustle when she shifts a little.

"It's not as fun as you think, Aang."

"Yes it is," he replies obstinately. "I've worked before. It can be fun, as long as you have the right attitude for it. I can go into town and…and…well, I'll find something. I can do it. I can take care of you."

Her hand tightens around his. "You're too young."

She's never spoken of his age before. How the walls of maturity separated them. Ever since they met a year ago, she's been careful not to breach the subject, not to break down its defenses. But here, she is vulnerable, she is in love with someone much too young for her and he knows she thinks it's unnatural. It's not _right_.

A surge of envy and anger floods through him. He tears himself away from her wonderful body heat and alluring smell and glides out of the bed on a burst of air from his fingertips.

"I'm not too young," he retorts ferociously. She sits up, looking at him beseechingly. "I can do it. If you can find work then so can I."

"Aang, you don't understand…"

"You're right," he snarls. "I _don't_."

She wafts toward him like a brine-soaked breeze. "Please…I don't mean it to insult you. I know you can take care of yourself…but there is nothing down there in that town that you can do to earn anything. Not even a copper piece."

"Then how do you do it?" He asks her, accusatory. "How do _you_ find it?"

She looks away, ashamed. Tears of guilt and disgrace spring up in her sea-stone eyes like nasty weeds. "I don't…I-I have to sell my mother's old possessions. I sell half of my harvest. It's not easy, but I do it."

"Let me sell the harvest. I want to help you…please."

"Aang…" Her voice is patronizing. "Look, I need to tell you something. Something I've been keeping from you. It's important-"

"_No."_

She reaches for him, but he pulls away and runs out into the falling sheets of night.

/viii./

It is fully dark when he returns and Hateya has long since gone from the house. The lights are doused and it looks like a soulless body, a skeleton missing its vital skins. He recalls the way she looked at him when he tore his hand out of her reach, that tearful need for his acceptance, and he suddenly feels ashamed. Guilty.

He looks down at the town, all lit up like a sun all its own, and measures its size. It's small, with only a few shops and merchant carts that were just beginning to close dotting the main walks. He wonders if he can find her but the doubt is smothered in his sudden _need _to apologize. He rushes back into the house and takes a traveling cloak and a long strip of cloth to wrap around his forehead, to hide his arrow tattoos, despite his pride in them. It was safer to hide now.

It is not far, the way into town, and the path is clear of undergrowth and anything larger than fragments of rock. Before long, the first outer ring of light touches the trail. Then, it grows a little brighter, a little brighter, until he's standing in a puddle of the glow emanating from the street lanterns which lined the walks. It is bigger now that he is standing in the middle of it and the doubt begins to nudge at his insides.

_Where to go now?_

He sees a merchant nearby, packing up his cart. Aang looks at it fleetingly for a moment only to recognize Hateya's last good harvest of _bok choy _intermixed with the display of vegetables. She has said before that an older man with a long beard and a shock of white hair always buys her _bok choy _before. Perhaps he will recognize her, Aang thinks.

The merchant is surprised at the suddenness of Aang's advance, but looks at him expectantly.

"Pardon me sir, I know you are preparing to leave for the night, but have you seen a girl with dark hair and blue eyes tonight?" He asks. The man nods.

"Which way did she go?"

The man points in the direction of a small inn, one that Aang has seen from a distance many times before. It is the tallest structure for miles.

Aang bows in return for the man's valuable information, mutters a hasty _thank you, _and then hurries along before the curiosity in the merchant's eyes give way to closer scrutiny. Only a few people are scattered on the walks, but there are few that witness Aang's entrance into the inn. Even fewer see him climb the stairs that lead up to the rooms.

_She's staying here? Did I hurt her that bad? I'm such an idiot…_

He hears the creak of what he assumes to be floorboards from the room two doors down from where he stands and lunges for it, desperate to regain her approval. The door is unlocked and he rips it open with such force that it's a wonder it's not torn completely off its rusting hinges.

But Aang's mind is absent of the state of the door.

And is filled, instead, with a horrific sight.

A man is splayed over her as she lies on the bed beneath him. Like a blanket made of skin. His mouth is attached to her neck as she stares blankly at the doorway, as if hoping for some way to escape, but Aang doesn't notice the look in her eyes. All he sees is the physical evidence of an act of intimacy which forms an unbreakable bond, one that he knows little about, only that it is forbidden. Only that it is an unspoken act of _love._

"Hateya…" He says her name with the weight of a breaking heart on his lips.

She is brushing the man off of her as if he is merely ashes. A coat of dust that she can simply remove with her fingertips. _Is he nothing to her? _Aang wonders, almost aloud. Is this merely an act to keep him unaware? He doesn't know. He doesn't know much of anything anymore, he realizes.

There are tears in her eyes as she tells the strange man to _get out_. The harsh flatness of cruelty and abhorrence enters the low murmur that is her voice and the man is but a ghost of a glance in a moment. He leaves something in his wake, something in her hand with a look of pity in his dark eyes.

Hateya's hair falls over her in waves, a curtain to hide her from her shame as she looks at the silver piece in her palm. _Payment. _He wants to ask her, but the answer seems too obvious and too wounding to risk the words.

He goes to the window, hoping a change of scenery will abate the shock…and the hurt.

It is painful, that it all makes sense. Because he somehow knew and never realized.

_Look, I need to tell you something. Something I've been keeping from you. It's important._

She's been trying to tell him all along, but did he listen? No. _I'm an idiot. What's wrong with me? Why didn't I let her tell me before?_

"Aang, please," she says, tears saturating her voice. "Please, let me explain…I-In the beginning, I did sell the produce from my garden, but it wasn't enough. I couldn't live on a few gold pieces during the winter season when my garden was dead, so I had to turn to something. There was nothing left but…but this. I _had _to, Aang. I hate it, I hate it _so_, _so _much… but I have to because there's nothing _else_."

He believes her. There's honesty in her expression that can't be ignored.

His throat is closing and it feels like he can't breathe as a vortex of emotions sucks in all the air from his lungs. He hates her, he decides. He doesn't need her. He hates her and it's all her fault. The strings of his attachment for her are strained, thrumming from the pressure, but are not broken.

"Please," she whispers somewhere behind him, lost in the haze of blindness. She leans her head against the part which divides his shoulder blades, her hair brushing the nape of his neck. "Please say something."

He wants to cry, but it's too late. He realizes what he needs to do, the dreams are too persistent and…and he just can't live with this new discovery. It's something that haunts him. Pulls him down from the fortress of trust and love and contentment he has been in the last year until all that's left is rubble. Piece by piece, brick by brick, he's reduced to the pain again. The loneliness.

She wants him to stay, but he can't.

He just needed a catalyst and here it is. The first push out the door. He wants to save her from this half-life, this cruel profession, this desperation that reduces her to a whore on the streets of a no-name village. All because of a war that leaves her destitute…a war with no base. No _reason. _He can stop it…and he will.

"I know what I need to do," he says, never facing her. He doesn't want to see her weep; it'll only make it harder. "It took me a long time, but I know now. It's clearer. You can't live like this…it's not fair. But I know now that I can change this. I _can _help you."

She pauses, horror dark and heavy as it settles in her face. "What do you mean?"

He turns away from her. _Don't look…if you look, you won't be able to go. It's for her. Go for her. But if you look, you won't go. Don't look._

"Aang…" she calls for him. "Aang, please…please don't leave. I-I will gladly quit this…this terrible charade if you'll just stay. I love you…I love you very much and you're the closest thing to family I've had in so long. You're closer than family. You're a part of me now. If you leave, I'll be torn in two again."

"I have to go…" He replies automatically, folding his emotions and putting them away. "I have to…you don't understand."

"Don't do this to me, Aang. Don't…don't go. I'll find some other way to earn money. Please…just…just _stay."_

He's reached the door by now and she's so desperate that she yanks him by the shoulder to face her. She doesn't wait for him to respond, to react, and tries to kiss him. But he turns his head and it lands on his cheek instead. He watches as she closes her eyes. Defeat.

"I promised I would take care of you…but I can't do that here. I have to go away for a while," he says, but he watches her hands. Memorizes everything about her so he can never forget. " I don't expect you to wait for me, but when my job is done, I'll come back. I promise."

"Aang…"

But her voice is lost to the wind.

He is already gone.

…_Goodbye._

_

* * *

_

As one door closes…

Another opens.

* * *

Author's Notes: An AU piece I just got in my head tonight. I'll edit the mistakes later, but as of right now I've been working on this since ten last night and it's 6:30 am here so...I'm terribly night-worn. Forgive the small errors if you can. Well, I had been thinking. What would have happened if Aang did not have Katara and Sokka to help him? What would have been his motivation? Really, the girl is just a metaphor - she stands for the love of his people, destroyed and reduced to mere ashes, and his love of the world and his duty to keep it safe from tyranny. Of course, she is more than a metaphor, but basically she is the catalyst, the rock thrown at Aang's head to make him think.

And, in celebration of the movie coming out soon, I based Aang more on his movie counterpart than his cartoony self. Hopefully that doesn't piss some of you off...I'm just so excited and Noah Ringer is just a little _doll. _I seriously love that kid! He's so endearing.

If you want to see what the girl looks like, look in my profile...

In the meantime, I appreciate all your reviews. They are wonderful. Thank you!

Disclaimer - All belongs to Mike and Bryan. Nothing belongs to me except my original character (her name is pronounced Hah-tay-yuh, I think, not Hate-yuh).


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